ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  LIBERTY  LOAN 
COMMITTEE  OF  THE  NEW  YORK 
STOCK  EXCHANGE 


I  am  here  in  response  to  the  very  gracious  invitation  of  your  Committee 
that  I  should  make  a  brief  speech  as  to  the  work  tliat  lies  before  you.  \Vlien 
I  was  asked,  I  attempted  to  plead  off,  as  it  seemed  to  me  to  be  carrying  coals 
to  Newcastle  in  speaking  to  a  body  of  men  such  as  this  on  such  a  subject, 
but  I  knew  that  no  group  of  men  would  more  readily  appreciate  the 
necessity  of  carrying  forward  this  loan  to  a  speedy  and  complete  success  than 
those  whom  I  am  addressing.  As  for  your  spirit  of  patriotism  I  want  to  give 
my  evidence,  for  what  it  is  worth,  at  this  time,  that  there  is  no  more  patriotic 
place  in  all  this  country  than  Wall  Street.  It  was  the  first  place  to  have 
the  flags  of  the  allied  nations  flying  in  profusion,  and  in  my  own  journeys 
through  this  country  in  connection  with  war  work,  I  have  found  no  place 
where  the  spirit  of  loyalty  is  finer  than  here  at  Broad  and  Wall  Streets,  and 
therefore  I  feel  I  am  carrying  coals  to  Newcastle  when  I  appeal  to  the 
patriotic  members  of  this  Stock  Exchange  to  make  a  complete  and  speedy 
success  of  this  new  loan. 

All  that  I  can  say  in  the  few  minutes  that  I  propose  to  trespass  upon 
your  patience  will  be  not  with  respect  to  the  causes  of  the  war,  for  that,  while 
in  no  sense  academic,  is  no  longer  open  to  controversy.  Our  Country  has 
declared  its  pohcy.  It  must  be  supported.  I  want  to  impress  upon  you 
what  has  painfully  impressed  me  the  last  three  months,  since  the  temporary 
collapse  of  Russia,  and  that  is,  that  we  are  in  the  most  fateful  and  critical 
hour  of  the  greatest  crisis  of  all  history,  and  that  the  determination  of  the 
issue  of  this  titanic  contest  will  not  only  affect  all  civilization,  but  especially 
and  vitally  the  prestige,  dignity,  standing,  and  possibly  even  the  moral 
independence  of  the  United  States. 


I  remember  when  the  war  broke  out  that  I  was  in  Switzerland,  and 
when  the  clouds  commenced  to  gather,  having  been  something  of  a  student  for 
many  years  of  these  international  problems,  I  very  promptly  left  St.  Moritz, 
and  journeyed  to  Paris  to  get  ahead  of  the  storm,  and  as  I  remember,  when 
I  approached  the  town  of  Basle,  on  the  night  when  the  Kaiser  declared  his 
state  of  martial  law  as  a  preliminary  to  the  coming  hostilities,  the  thought 
was  then  impressed  upon  me  that  this  was  the  greatest  crisis  in  history  since 
the  days  of  that  great  upheaval  which  is  known  in  history  as  the  Reforma- 
tion.   The  Reformation,  while  to  some  extent  a  protest  of  democracy 
against  then  existing  forms  of  government,  yet  had  as  its  chief  causes 
religious  differences,  about  which  the  average  man  to-day  is  not  greatly 
concerned.    At  all  events,  doctrinal  differences  about  which  men  would  be 
as  indisposed  to  fight  to-day  as  to  fight  about  similar  doctrinal  issues,  which 
devastated  the  human  race  in  the  earlier  centuries  of  the  Christian  era. 
The  quarrels  in  the  third  century  turned  upon  a  Greek  dipthong,  it  being  a 
question  of  the  exact  conception  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  yet 
men,  divided  into  the  homouists  and  the  homoiuists,  shed  their  heart's  blood 
on  a  question  about  which  men  would  not  fight  to-day. 

The  issues  of  the  present  war  are  more  vital  and  fundamental.  Nothing 
in  modern  history  can  surpass  in  vital  importance  for  all  the  future  the 
present  crisis.  That,  I  think,  is  reasonably  clear,  at  all  events,  if  it  does 
not  impress  you,  no  words  that  I  can  employ  in  this  brief  time  would  con- 
vince you  as  to  the  surpassing  importance  of  the  crisis.  This  is  its  fatal 
moment. 

I  have  travelled  somewhat  through  this  country,  and  I  have  endeavored 
to  diagnose  the  opinions  of  my  countrymen  so  far  as  one  can  diagnose  so 
complex  a  thing  as  a  heterogeneous  democracy,  such  as  ours  is.  I  am  very 


much  impressed  with  the  fact  that  there  has  been,  beyond  the  expectation 
of  most  men,  a  general  and  most  loyal  acquiescence  in  the  sacrifices  required 
by  the  war.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  among  all  classes,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  west  of  the  Mississippi  as  well  as  east,  a  certain  determination  to  see 
this  thing  through  for  the  prestige  of  America.  But  where  I  think  the 
American  spirit  falters,— not  in  courage  so  much  as  in  due  appreciation, — 
due  probably  to  oiu-  former  provincial  outlook  as  to  European  questions  and 
in  general  the  parochial  view  that  we  once  had  of  world  events, — is  the  fact 
that  we  have  a  happy-go-lucky  idea  that  this  war  somehow  is  coming  to  a 
successful  finish,  and  that  we  have  plenty  of  time  to  prepare  ourselves  to 
meet  its  demands,  and  that  in  good  time  it  will  come  to  a  successful  con- 
clusion, and  that  we  will  be  in  that  conclusion  a  determining  factor. 

God  grant  that  it  may  be  so,  but  I  think  we  are  very  rash  in  assuming 
that  it  will  necessarily  be  so. 

Do  you  remember  years  ago,  when  Sir  Henry  Irving  played  one  of  his 
most  striking  roles,  called  "The  Corsican  Brothers"?  In  the  last  act  of 
"The  Corsican  Brothers,"  the  two  duelists  in  an  Italian  vendetta  each  held 
the  wrist  of  the  other,  which  contained  a  dagger,  and  there  they  stood,  eye 
glancing  into  eye,  with  chests  heaving,  with  the  expenditure  of  every  ounce 
of  physical  and  nervous  strength,  panting  with  every  breath  as  each  gave  the 
last  effort  that  he  could  to  wrest  the  hand  that  had  the  dagger  from  the 
grasp  of  the  other  in  order  to  end  the  conflict  by  plunging  it  into  the  breast 
of  his  antagonist.  Do  you  remember  the  intensity  with  which  Henry  Irving 
played  that  part,  until  that  final  moment,  when  the  man  of  superior  strength 
suddenly  wrenched  his  hand  free  and  plunged  the  dagger  to  the  very  hilt 
into  the  breast  of  his  antagonist?  If  you  remember  that,  you  will  have 
what  in  my  judgment  is  a  very  fair  description  of  the  present  hour  in  the 


ever  suffered  within  a  like  periwl  of  time,  with  a  million  of  her  sons  lying 
under  the  soil  between  the  Channel  and  the  Vosges  Mountains,  was,  when  we 
entered  the  war,  in  a  situation  where  it  was  with  some  of  her  best  thinkers 
a  question  whether  the  military  deadlock  could  be  broken,  and  whether, 
therefore,  it  was  possible  to  go  on  indefinitely.  She  has  borne  the  heat  and 
burden  of  the  day.    Her  resources  are  not  inexhaustible. 

When  this  country  came  into  the  struggle  it  carried  inspiration  and 
encouragement  into  the  French  trenches.  Nothing  thrilled  the  French 
more,  nothing  appealed  more  to  their  imagination,  nothing  reinvigorated 
their  failing  strength  more  than  the  little  simple  incident,  which,  I  think, 
will  be  immortal  in  the  history  of  these  two  countries,  when  Pershing  stood 
in  front  of  the  tomb  of  Lafayette  in  that  little  cemetery  in  Paris  and  said, 
"liafayette,  here  we  are." 

Suppose  this  Liberty  Loan  were  to  fail.  What  would  be  the  impression 
in  France?  What  would  be  the  impression  in  England?  Eight  months 
have  passed  since  Von  Bernstorff  was  given  his  passports.  It  would  not  be 
surprising  if  our  French  and  English  allies  were  beginning  to  say,  "Give  us 
lielj)  speedily,  for  if  you  do  not,  it  is  possible  that  the  powers  of  darkness 
in  this  struggle  might,  by  a  military  fluke  or  some  fortuitous  circumstance 
have  a  success  that  might  turn  the  scales  of  the  titanic  struggle."  Certainly, 
if  the  word  will  flash  through  France  and  England  two  weeks  from  to-day 
that  the  second  Liberty  I^oan  of  America  is  a  failure,  that  the  American 
people  refused  to  subscribe, — they  have  thus  voted  more  effectually  as  if 
they  put  a  piece  of  paper  in  a  ballot  box — that  they  did  not  want  the  war,  and 
were  unwilling  to  support  their  government  in  its  further  prosecution, — 
WHAT  WOULD  THEY  THINK  OVER  THERE? 

All  that  civilization  has  ever  sought  to  build  up  in  the  last  hundred 


years  has  been  based  on  the  idea  that  there  was  a  rule  of  justice  in  the  affairs 
of  men  and  that  that  justice  should  he  deterniined  by  the  processes  of 
reasoning,  and  that  the  littlest  nation,  be  it  ever  so  small,  had  a  right — a 
God-given  right — to  have  that  cause  determined  against  the  mightiest  power 
by  the  processes  of  reason.  And  yet,  the  inevitable  moral  result  of  Germany's 
victory  in  this  war  is  that  reason  is  of  no  potency  in  the  commonwealth  of 
nations,  that  justice  is  a  rhapsody  of  words,  that  little  states  have  no  rights 
whatever,  that  there  is  no  law  except  might,  that  there  are  no  princi[)lcs  of 
chivalry  left  to  protect  women  and  children  and  non-combatants,  and  that 
there  is  no  sovereign  reason  to  which  nations  can  appeal;  that  the  only  law 
is  that  of  terror,  the  law  of  f rightfulness;  that  the  country  that  is  superior 
in  its  capacity  for  moral  obliquity,  in  the  inflicting  of  all  manner  of  devilish 
atrocities,  is  the  nation  which,  as  Milton  describes  Satan  in  hell,  "is  by  merit 
raised  tb  that  bad  eminence."  And  in  hell,  Germany  would  sit  as  overlord, 
as  Satan  sits  in  hell— BECAUSE  CIVILIZATION  WILL  BE  A 
HELL  IF  THIS  WAR  IS  LOST. 

We  might,  three  thousand  miles  away,  with  a  hundred  millions  of 
people,  preserve  a  part  of  our  independence.  But  nations  do  not  fight  in 
groups,  and  I  tell  you  again — and  I  say  it  solenuily — that  if  Germany 
shall  win  this  war  it  will  draw,  as  the  magnet  draws  the  filings,  all  the 
residuum  of  the  so-called  neutral  powers  to  itself,  and  even,  perhaps,  some 
nations,  or  parts  of  nations,  which  are  now  our  allies.  And  with  such  a 
power  her  might  will  overshadow  the  world,  and  even  the  independence  of 
this  nation  may  be  menaced  by  a  group  of  nations  acting  under  the  lash  of 
the  conqueror. 

Do  you  think  after  more  than  a  hundred  years  of  independence  that 
America  will  welcome  a  return  to  a  condition  of  slavish  subserviency  to  a 


German  king?  It  may  not  be  a  question  of  what  we  wish  to  endure,  but 
what  we  must  stand,  if  that  dreadful  eventuality  should  come  to  pass. 

And,  therefore,  I  simply  say  to  you— and  I  beg  your  pardon  for  this 
undue  trespass  upon  the  time  of  busy  men— do  not  think  it  a  matter  of 
slight  importance  that  this  loan  should  have  a  prompt  and  generous  response 
from  the  people  of  this  country,  we  must  show  that  our  hearts  are  really  in 
this  struggle,  for  the  failure  of  this  Liberty  Loan  would  be  worth  a  whole 
army  to  the  Kaiser's  forces. 


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